During the 1980s, conflict raged between South Africa’s white minority Afrikaner government and the black majority opposition.
In 1998, Vlok confessed to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that in 1988 he had engineered the bombing of the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, a prominent opposition group.
You may imagine my interest when BBC television told of Vlok’s 2006 attempt to reconcile personally with Rev. Frank Chikane, former head of the South African Council of Churches, the group whose headquarters Vlok had bombed.
Chikane said Vlok visited his office and gave him a Bible with this inscription: “I have sinned against the Lord and against you, please forgive me (John 13:15).”
But South African president Thabo Mbeki found his Chikane footwashing impressive: “I was deeply moved that an elderly Afrikaaner, with Adriaan Vlok’s history and pedigree, could speak as he did and break with his past in the manner he has.
